News

If you have any News or Events you would like to share with the Network please

After the National Gathering......

Posted: Saturday 29th March 2025, 9:27 AM

Today (29th March) the Core Group meet to follow up on the National Gathering held on Saturday 8th February on Zoom. There was good attendance at the NG: 24 members, from all over the UK (including, for the first time, Scotland). The theme of the Gathering was Evolution. Three core group members presented different perspectives on the evolution of SPPN, and this was followed by small-group discussion among the attending membership. In considering various aspects of potential growth and development, there was an overriding feeling across the groups that organic growth is the way the Network has evolved and should continue to evolve, and that active pursuit of growth would be counterproductive. Upholding the core values of the Network, as expressed simply and eloquently by Jim Cotter, is at the heart of our being. Depth of experience, contemplation, shelter and healing for ‘all faiths and none’ is at the heart of our Places. In this, active consolidation is growth. Ali Green’s presentation on the physical links and possibilities had been inspiring to many, as was the encouragement that she brought to forging local links and networks. This organic approach also enables emphasis on the local context of each Place, which is at the heart of its history and nature. The formal business of reports being accepted took up the last part of the meeting, which closed on a positive feeling of shared awareness and confirmation of who we are as a Network, and what we do best. The Core Group will be picking this up and working on the continuation of that feeling.

Reflections for Lent

Posted: Saturday 8th March 2025, 7:52 PM

Ali Green is once again posting a daily meditation/reflection on Facebook for the season of Lent, relating each day to one of our Small Pilgrim Places.

NATIONAL GATHERING

Posted: Friday 7th February 2025, 7:21 PM

We are looking forward to our National Gathering on Zoom on Saturday 8th February, when we will be looking at the future evolution of the Network.

Advent

Posted: Sunday 8th December 2024, 6:50 PM

Once again Ali Green is posting a reflection each day during Advent on our Facebook page. Definitely worth looking at - a small moment of contemplation in amongst the hustle and bustle of this time of year.

NewPlaces

Posted: Thursday 19th September 2024, 7:07 PM

Welcome to four new Places that have joined us over the summer - Wiggonholt Church (Sussex), Holy Trinity Dilton Marsh (Wiltshire), Magdalen Chapel (Bath), and St Giles Bradfield (Norfolk). STOP PRESS: Another new Place - St Mary's Bitton (Bristol) has also just joined the Network. The word seems to be spreading! We also have several enquiries on the go about potential Places.

The Archangel’s Way – A day of guided pilgrimage

Posted: Sunday 8th September 2024, 7:36 PM

The Archangels's Way (which includes SPP St Michael's Brentor) is holding a day of guided Pilgrimage on Saturday 14th September. There will be two guided pilgrimage walks, both leaving from Belstone Village Home, one at 9.30 am and a shorter 3 mile one at 1.30 pm., both returning to Belstone at 3.30 pm. when there will be a Morris dancing performance. Details on https://devonpilgrim.org.uk/event/the-archangels-way/

Creationtide

Posted: Wednesday 4th September 2024, 7:48 PM

Ali Green is once again posting a brief daily meditation on our Facebook page during Creationtide. The first three are in the Recent Additions section of this website, as a taster!

Ali's Journal

Posted: Saturday 13th July 2024, 4:20 PM

We have been uploading several of Ali Green's Journal entries from her recent visits to Small Pilgrim Places. (They can be found in Ali's Journal section of the menu on the home page). She often finds out interesting little snippets of information, and takes some lovely photographs, so well worth having a look even if you aren't planning a visit!

A new walk

Posted: Saturday 18th May 2024, 8:54 AM

We have recently collaborated with the Quiet Garden Movement to produce a leaflet linking St Winwaloe's Church Gunwalloe with the Degibna Prayer Garden, both near Helston. Two beautiful places, linked by three miles of public paths and local roads, offering rest and spiritual renewal in the south west of Cornwall. Another pilgrimage was undertaken by one of our members in Holy Week to Walsingham - formerly known as Student Cross the name was changed recently to Pilgrim Cross, to reflect the wider ages of the participants! The pilgrim stopped at his church in Oddington (one of our SPPs) for prayers and a talk by Nigel on the history of the church. Read about it at https://churchofstandrewoddington.org/news/

Labyrinths

Posted: Friday 21st July 2023, 10:26 AM

Our featured gallery recently showed some of the labyrinths associated with Small Pilgrim Places. Labyrinths are ancient spiritual pathways found across the world and embraced by church communities since the 4th century as a support for prayer. A labyrinth is different from a maze. A labyrinth has only one path that always leads to the centre...you cannot get lost...just stay on the path. Today labyrinths are again being created to offer a spiritual space for prayer and reflection, providing a stilling space in a busy world. They are a way of slowing down...of being thoughtful...of spending time with god. Walking a labyrinth is like making a pilgrimage - it is a journey where on the way in you might think about loved ones, distractions or burdens, be open to receiving grace, love and peace at the centre, and returning uplifted, blessed and renewed.

New on the Website!

Posted: Thursday 6th April 2023, 4:51 PM

We are very pleased that there is now an interactive map (on Home page or link on Places to Visit page). The map enables you to see how many Places there are in a Region, and if you zoom in you can see the individual Places - clicking on the Place marker will bring up all the information about that Place. We hope this will make it easier for people to plan visits, or just to see where Places are in a geographical context. Many thanks to our Web manager Kevin for his hard work in getting this done for us.

National Gathering

Posted: Saturday 23rd October 2021, 7:06 PM

A group of members met by Zoom on Saturday to discuss the Network and how it should move forward. There was lots of useful discussion, sharing of different experience of members and Places, and the Core Group will now put this discussion into a format which can be shared and help all the Network members to participate in the Network's future. Coming out of the discussion was the value of connecting with other Places and members in the Network, and also an affirmation of the vision of places as somewhere to provide "space on the journey, for breathing, pondering, meditating, praying and just ‘being’". Watch this space!

Let there be peace

Posted: Sunday 12th November 2017, 4:49 PM

Appropriately on Remembrance Sunday the SPP at Abergavenny recently sent us a poem "Let there be peace" by Lemn Sissay spoken at Abergavenny Friends gathering on International Peace Day. It is in the Inspiration section of our Members' Area or can easily be found by Googling, or use the weblink http://blog.lemnsissay.com/2012/03/23/let-there-be-peace/#sthash.jaOE1EV2.dpbs

National Gathering

Posted: Monday 7th November 2016, 10:45 AM

We had a really good day at the National Gathering at Hedd Wen, Abergavenny. We were made very welcome, and it was good to meet other members and friends from the Network. Esther de Waal's inspiring talk was entitled “The Garden of the heart - a place to be alone with God“. She spoke of the importance of the sense of interior space, something known and acknowledged across the world, across religions, through the ages - the need for an inner space. It is there in the monastery - the cloister round the enclosed central (often green) breathing space; in the roman house, the mosque, the temple, the farmstead - sometimes even in the shopping centre. And there in the breathing space so often will be a fountain. A poem from Bonnie Thurston - "At the monastic centre is always a cloister, an orchestrated emptiness, a place of light a fountain to feed the heart’s garden. Give me this life: a centre empty of all but light, the stillness of Eden before fruit was plucked, my heart a spring of living water."

Children's Photo Art Trail

Posted: Sunday 14th September 2014, 9:10 PM

St. Laurence Church,Hallgarth, Pittington (www.saint-laurence.org.uk) has set up a PHOTO ART TRAIL for Children. ST. LAURENCE’S 10th century church is full of pictures, stories, patterns and shapes, in stone, wood and glass. It can make a family visit - there are refreshments to enjoy along with the activities. The trail encourages children to get the BIG picture from the SMALL details, TEST their observation, SEARCH for details, DRAW and DESIGN, and THINK BIG with some puzzling objects For more information or to make a group booking, please contact Dave Arnott: 0191 372 1683 or Sylvia Hope: 0191 372 1190

Etched by Silence - A Pilgrimage Through the Poetry of R. S. Thomas

Posted: Sunday 25th August 2013, 7:30 PM

Canterbury Press (www.canterburypress.co.uk) have published a new edition of Jim Cotter’s compilation of poems by Wales' famous poet-priest, R S Thomas, interspersed with short reflections and questions for exploration that connect the poetry to the North Wales landscape that inspired it. Originally produced locally, its appeal extends to all who know and love the poetry, and whose own faith and questions are mirrored in it. The book brings the poetry alive in a fresh way and provides a pilgrim guide to the locality, along with reflections that enable readers everywhere to enter more deeply into the world of the poems. The companion DVD is also still available - contact jim@cottercairns.co.uk. All royalties will continue to go to maintaining the church at Aberdaron (which is one of our Small Pilgrim Places).

Church bell rings out at Shopping Centre

Posted: Wednesday 9th January 2013, 1:43 PM

“Church bell to ring out at shopping centre” – one of our Places made the headlines as its bell, cast by Exeter's Robert Norton during the reign of Henry VI, was restored following a donation from the city's Guildhall shopping centre, in which the church sits. Andrew McNeilly, manager of the shopping centre, said: "The church is an important part of what makes us unique – we are the only shopping centre in the world to boast a 12th-century church at its heart.." The bell bears the Latin inscription "Quamvis sum parva tamen audior ampla per arva", which means: "I may be small, nevertheless I am heard over a wide distance."